Chinese scientists are exploring the viability of a manned lunar radar station, says the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
The National Natural Science Foundation of China invested around $2.5 million into this project early this year, and a two-day brainstorming meeting attended by over 40 experts was held in June.
The lunar radar project is led by Chinese Academy of Sciences radar technology expert Guo Huadong, who first proposed the idea for a moon-based radar station in a paper published in Science China Earth Sciences three years ago.
In his paper, Guo suggests that such a base could be used as a stable, durable Earth observation platform, one much more reliable than traditional satellites and space stations.
He argues that a lunar radar base would allow scientists to keep a watchful eye on extreme weather conditions, earthquakes, agricultural production, the melting polar ice caps, and other important global events.
According to the SCMP, a moon-based radar system could potentially monitor areas on land, under the water, and underground.
The planned moon base would include living quarters and a radar antenna roughly 165 feet in length. China’s Science and Technology News reports that the base would be able to transmit around 1.4 GB of data every second, far surpassing the capabilities of all existing long-distance space communication technology.
Guo said that such a base will require large amounts of power, so either a solar or nuclear power production center would be required to effectively operate a lunar outpost long term. The high demands of the lunar radar base project make it outrageously expensive.
While not mentioned in recent Chinese reports on the lunar radar station, a manned lunar base could also have a number of military applications. Not only are there opportunities for advanced military reconnaissance, but were China to outfit its lunar outpost with missiles, China could easily fire high-speed, hard-to-intercept projectiles at enemy targets. Past reports indicate that China, recognizing the strategic value of dominance in space, may choose to pursue military supremacy in space.
Fortunately, this might be a bit of a non-issue.
China took a big step towards realizing its goals for the deployment of a land rover on Mars by 2020 with the launch of a new type of rocket in June, and China just launched the world’s first un-hackable quantum communications satellite on August 15. Despite China’s successes in space, setting up a manned lunar base is a serious challenge, one that many Chinese scholars and citizens believe that China lacks the ability to overcome.
One scientist told the SCMP that the moon base idea is absurd. Another reported that it would be cheaper to fill “the sky with a constellation of spy satellites,” which could produce similar results for a “fraction of the costs.”
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